Business Intelligence: Getting Smarter, But Still Learning - ' Obstacles Remain ' (
Page 5 of 9 )
Obstacles Remain
MassHousing, the Massachusetts
state-facilitated public housing
authority, faced problems in moving
and retrieving information across its six
divisions, which handle millions of dollars
in financing for affordable housing,
according to BI project manager Carl
Richardson. If people wanted to see
total loan amounts across divisions,
for instance, they would have to access
multiple databases and then manually
correlate the data, Richardson says.
MassHousing directors wanted to
centralize data that was siloed in those
divisions and create an information
system that would provide executives
with access to pertinent information
with greater accuracy.
The agency deployed the Cognos
8 business intelligence platform in
late 2005 along with the BEA Systems
AquaLogic management system. An
internal portal was created to provide
users with a centralized entry point to
access budget information and to proactively
highlight reports presented to
executives.
"It has enabled us to put the focus
beyond the hard-copy reports on what
has happened with the company, and
show our corporate leaders trends
and analysis they can use to map out
the future direction of this agency,"
Richardson says.
But, Richardson acknowledges, BI
will likely remain a challenge on multiple
technical fronts.
"Right now the field is wide open—
really almost too wide open," he says.
"The possibilities are limited only by
your imagination, and sometimes the
hard part is trying to focus on what you
really want to get done.
"We are at the beginning of a revolution,
and I believe the trend toward business
intelligence is still relatively new," he
adds. "IT is a critical enabler that a lot of
people still don't really understand, but as
they see that even small efforts with the
tools can yield some genuine results, the
use will only grow."
Business intelligence is entering
a third wave of deployment that has
taken the technology beyond the
hurdles of acceptance and some missteps
by early adopters to a maturing
technology that is gaining widespread
support, according to IDC analyst Dan
Vesset.
"The real benefits of business intelligence
are just starting to develop
with businesses that have been playing
with this stuff for as long as a couple of
decades," Vesset says. "As the intuitiveness
of the tools continues to improve,
the barriers of complexity are beginning
to fall."
Next Page: Business Intelligence: Maturing Steadily
Projects: Business Intelligence 
